NEW YEAR, NEW ME: Blues Take Origin Game 1 With A 22-12 Win

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If an observer was to apply a critical eye to all of the Origin content posted by P.TV in the last few years, they might ask themselves one question: why does a primarily Sydney– and Melbourne-based organisation repeatedly show a completely unrepentant bias in favour of the Maroons?

I’m going to pull the curtain back here a little bit and tell you: because two of us care about Origin. One’s a Queenslander (me) and the other is Tasmanian – a people I spiritually consider to be Queenslanders.

So I speak for all of us (again, two people, really) when I say: we were apprehensive going into this game. No Thurston, no Smith, no Slater, no Cronk. That roster of heavyweights that has carried us since circa 2006 is slowly coming to an end, as it must.

Queensland opened with a strong 6 minutes, never letting the Blues off the back foot. Then the Blues flipped the script, keeping it near Queensland’s try line for an uncomfortably long period of time before taking a penalty kick and getting an early lead, followed by a try around the 20-minute mark.

Valentine Holmes got Queensland their first try with an incredible uninterrupted run to place it right between the posts at around 27 minutes.

The action in the second half started early with a neat try from Dane Gagai mere minutes in (beautifully converted by Holmes), bringing the score to 8-12.

By the 51-minute mark, the Blues already brought the heat back, with tries from Latrell Mitchell and Tom Trbojevic, respectively, bringing them up to 18-12.

After 20 minutes of inconclusive back and forth, Josh Addo-Carr places one very neatly in the corner, giving the Blues a pretty definitive 70-minute lead at 22-12 as Maloney just misses the kick.

The Blues very nearly missed grounding the ball for a 77th-minute try, almost making the Maroons’ seemingly impossible task even more impossible. Ado-Carr similarly juuust failed to get one down in the 78th minute, going to the video ref in a move apparently designed to give Queenslanders aneurysms by drawing out the last few minutes as long as possible.

Unfortunately, failing to pull a miracle out of their ass in the last minute and a half, the Blues take the first win of the series at 22-12.

The Blues are looking strong but, as I simply must remind you, Origin is three games and you can’t keep a good man down.